To Linger
by Schildkroete
Summary: Post LotTL. It's the Doctor's birthday and the Master makes him a present. Special guest appearance by the last dodo. Slash.


"I've been here before." The Doctor's voice is quiet. He's talking to himself more than anything, looking out of the door. Their surroundings don't seem familiar, with all the concrete and asphalt and people but he recognizes them anyway. This has been a paradise, once.

"Doesn't look very charming," the Master notes, gazing over his shoulder. "Planning to go for a walk?"

The Doctor shakes his head without thinking. He needs to get out, but not here – a thousand years back this has been a beautiful, peaceful island, now it is another demonstration of the carelessness of mankind, and the ignorance and egoism. It's just a reflection of something that has been lost. He doesn't want it.

"No friends in the area?" the Master wants to know. "You were here before, you said."

"That was centuries ago," the Doctor explains, closing the door. "Lifetimes." His mind travels through time, backwards, backwards. "There weren't that many people on Mauritius then but already they had managed to destroy so much. I met the last of the dodos there." He remembers the large, plump bird, so ridiculously trusting. "Of course she didn't know she was the last one. Kept wandering the island, wondering where all the others had gone. I pitied her." He laughs a little. He's been so young then. Knew nothing. "In the end she died as well. There was a fire. I tried to get to her but the flames cut me off." The Doctor speaks as if the Master would care, refuses to look up and see that he doesn't. "It was probably better that way. She wouldn't have found anything."

"And you didn't even look."

"I'm not a dodo. I knew."

-

The Master's face is difficult to look at, both longed for and despised. It isn't the face the Doctor would have chosen, had he had a choice – the man it belongs to is too wild, too haunted. Too far away from the boy he has been. He's the only one left.

He came back.

-

The Doctor wakes up without remembering falling asleep. He's lying on his bed, fully clothed – even his shoes are still there. Maybe the Master drugged him. He considers the idea without concern. There isn't much the other could have done, and the Doctor barely finds the strength to care.

When he arrives in the console room his first thought is that the desktop theme has been changed: the room is larger and brighter, lit by an artificial sun in an artificial sky. The Doctor steps inside and wanders over the meadow replacing the grate. In the distance he sees the doors, surrounded by nothing.

The Master is waiting for him at the console.

"Happy birthday," he sing-songs. The Doctor's eyes narrow.

"It's not my birthday," he points out, making the Master roll his eyes.

"Yes it is."

Unwillingly the Doctor checks, feeling stupid. In his mind he maps the time that has passed since he's left home over the separate timeline of Gallifrey and finds that it is true.

It's the first time he becomes aware of it for hundreds and hundreds of years.

"I don't usually pay attention," he says, not sure what to make of this. "It's not something that should be celebrated."

"Agreed," the Master nods. "But look! I've got you a present." He bents down, moves as if pushing something and then a big, shapeless bird with a large beak waddles out from behind the console. It speeds up when it sees the Doctor, and the Doctor drops to his knees to greet it.

"Erika," he says. "I thought you were dead!"

Erika has no opinion to that. She lets him pat her head and settles to clean her feathers. Now she is close the Doctor notices that she smells ever so slightly of smoke.

"I saved her from the fire. Picked her up when she was out of the viewing range of your younger self."

The Doctor should give a lecture about the dangers of crossing timelines.

"You can't leave the TARDIS," he states. There is no doubt in his voice.

"I didn't have to. Once I opened the doors she came running in. Why do you call her Erika?"

"Good name for a dodo." The Doctor doesn't ask _Why did you do it?_ A hundred possible answers but the one he wants to hear the Master couldn't even think of.

-

Erika is sitting beside the console and the sun is high in the sky. The Doctor is sitting where the couch would have been, on the ground, in the grass. The Master sits beside him, not close enough to touch. What would there be to touch, the Doctor wonders. For either of them.

"I used to know you," the Master suddenly says, carelessly, playing with the grass.

"Did you?" The Doctor has let go of his illusions when Japan burned. Looking back things tend to seem better than they were. "I don't think I ever knew you."

"You're just bitter. That's not like you."

"And it's not like you to care. Which you don't, I know that."

They were beginning to sound like children, and maybe that was a little bit like them.

The Master snorts before he says in mock indignation:

"Oh, I'm hurt."

"You're not real." The Doctor looks him in the eye as he speaks for they both know. "You're just a gift she made me so I won't be lonely."

"But you are."

"Yes. You're not here."

The Master laughs, looks up, at the sky that isn't.

"She probably wanted me to hold you and comfort you and all that stuff. Too bad. I'd never do that."

"I wouldn't want you to." The Doctor has told so many lies, he couldn't tell if this was another.

A low chuckle, and a hand covering his, solid and warm. It's like the grass and the sunshine and the wind that has started ever so slightly, caressing his cheek the way the hand never would. The illusion is too perfect.

"You're not real," the Doctor repeats without bitterness, his fingers closing around the other's none the less. They are squeezed, in a way that holds no fondness, and the Master says:

"Neither are you. You're a shadow, cast by something that's no longer there. You're a ghost, an echo. Reality doesn't want you." He leans closer and the Doctor, in return, has to lean back until he's lying on the ground. "You don't belong here," the Master tells him in his never changing voice. "You never did."

-

The manner in which the Master touches him would be tender if only he would care. The Doctor lets himself be taken and doesn't wonder who's taking him – him or her, or both of them. For an undefined span of time he doesn't think. But he's still feeling, can stop feeling, and the emptiness aches. He leans into the touches and meets the thrusts and his hands linger but never hold. His eyes never close while there's nothing to look at.

When it is over the Master rolls away from him. The Doctor doesn't watch to see what he's doing, doesn't move. There is no presence to disappear.

For a long time he stares at the sky that hasn't changed – the sun never wandered. Its rays are warming his skin for nothing else will. There are two sets of clothes scattered in the grass but one of them won't be worn again. The Doctor feels the absence of something that was never there and has no reason to grieve.

Erika is sitting where she sat before, enjoying the sun and watching him through her small, dark eyes that know no evil. Know only of the wind and the sun. It's enough. For her it's enough.

He, sprawled and naked in the grass, reaches for her, moves an arm far too short to reach across the distance between them.

"We are shadows," he tells her. "We are shadows." His voice is swallowed by the wind, the lack of anyone capable of understanding his words negating them. "We are extinct, you and I."

She watches the movement of his fingers as they curl and uncurl, grasping air.

February 23, 2008


End file.
